Ocean for the Sand
by MaussHauss
Summary: "So I reached out and smacked him on my last lap; because he was there, because of the way he had been looking at me before – like a man in the desert, determined to remind himself that the ocean was not on the horizon, that it was just a trick of the heat." DesShaun, slash, sequel to Evolution'ry Process.
1. gaining the shore

**: x :**

_And now, to hear Desmond's side of the story! Which will be less_  
_grammatically correct. I finished Brotherhood finally and man._  
_Damn. SO SAD. So you get this semi-fatalistic Desmond panicky_  
_fighty sexy mess, in which there are misunderstandings and_  
_dancing around of issues._

_You know._

_My favorite things._

* * *

1

* * *

Yeah, okay, so I'm an asshole.

You could see it plain as day, man, the way he _looked _at me when nobody else was in the room, arms crossed protectively over his cardigan as if reminding himself to keep up the angry nerd act. So, I picked on him, so what? We had a pretty good setup, filling my days with genetic time travel adventure and my nights with, well, worrying mostly. It took my mind off shit, picking fights. Rebecca was no good in a debate, all absurdity and wise-cracking. Lucy got too invested in what we were doing, which I understand, but that didn't make her any less of a downer.

So then there was Shaun, and Shaun was... ugh, man, I don't know. British? Temperamental? Something. Shaun was something. We even got along for a little while, when things were good, when it looked like we were winning in this our most epic struggle against the forces of – of –

Well, not evil. Megalomania, definitely, but I don't think either side was exactly in the right once it was made obvious we were all just being played by some higher power (story of my life). The whole situation was well fucked, but that's about as detailed as I'm classified to get. The point I'm trying to make, however, was that when shit got tough again, when the clock looked like it was starting its final countdown, was when everybody curled back up into their own defenses.

Lucy got... L_ucier._ Becca disappeared behind her headphones and hardly spoke. Shaun went back to despising the very sound of my voice, hell, the very sound of _anyone's_ voice. Right when I needed my dreamteam the most, they all dried up. Picked fights with each other and just kept sending me back to the animus. I didn't complain; I knew what was on the line.

But you get sick of it, after a while. I got sick of it.

I didn't want to be invisible.

So I reached out and smacked him on my last lap; because he was there, because of the way he had been looking at me before – all wide eyes behind the glare of his glasses. Like a man in the desert, determined to remind himself that the ocean was not on the horizon, that it was just a trick of the heat. Determined to ignore what was right in front of him.

I got his attention.

I got his attention and I wanted to scream in his smug fucking face to wake the fuck up already, to stop ignoring us for what was on a computer screen, to come back out of the past and maybe look around at what the present was offering. So I bullied him. Because I'm an asshole, and I'd rather annoy my friends than... than nothing. I got him in a headlock and felt the heat of his skin as his face reddened, a dark flicker of enjoyment at the fact that I could actually _do_ this, that we could fight like this and maybe blow off a little steam, that maybe things would get better for all of us if Shaun would just snap already and get it over with.

He didn't snap. Have I mentioned that I'm an asshole yet? Because I'm also a hypocrite, in case you were beginning to form some sort of positive impression. 'Oh sure, Desmond's not so bad; he was just trying to help!' … something like that? Well, I was really only trying to help myself, because I didn't want to go through this shit alone; because I didn't want to wake up from the animus every night to empty stares and grim silence. And the hypocritical thing was that I couldn't see the ocean from the sand, either.

Shaun wasn't my friend. He never lied about that, and if there was one thing he was good at it was keeping people at a distance (if I can sound a little talk-show touchy feely for a minute here). Lucy was never my friend either; she was a guardian, maybe. Becca was everybody's friend the way a potted plant is everybody's friend. I was starting to realize that, and it scared me.

What was going to happen after we found the apple? Where would these people disappear to; was I even allowed to leave after that point? Would Becca still e-mail me physics jokes; would Lucy send flirty dry-humored texts? Would Shaun, haha, would Shaun ever actually answer his phone? If even just to tell me to stop calling? I was an indispensable component, valued only by the circumstance of genetics.

That's kinda heavy, isn't it? Sorry. Can't keep smiling all the time, not even when I've got him in a small storage room, the card table shrinking between us as he stands with a clatter. When I know he's got no choice but to _listen_ to me, and is too easily provoked into answering questions he'd rather not. I did the research. I knew about his dead boyfriend, about Abstergo; I just wanted him to _say it out loud _for fuck's sake. To stop chewing it over inside himself like gnawing over a bone.

Then I wanted him to _do something about it_, but I guess he already was, here, with the animus project. Maybe I just wanted him to _do something_ about me. Anything. Give me a platform to build off of, not just sit there all the time carefully ignoring the sound of my voice.

Every time he said my name was like, I dunno, validation? That he knew I _had_ a name, that I wasn't just a subject number? Is that kinda pathetic? It is, isn't it? I was kinda in a pathetic place at the time, so, y'know.

Knowing how pathetic it was only served to piss me off. I honestly don't know what would have happened, if I hadn't had that full mental meltdown right there in the middle of everyone. Suddenly I was Ezio, and the scene I walked out into wasn't the rainy Tuscany night, but a sunny Toscano morning. I was just taking a stroll – thank little green apples that's all I was doing – trying to find a bread vendor. I woke up to cold and dark, bargaining with a wall over the price of a spiced roll. I could feel the warmth of the fragrant bread fading from my palm even as I mistook Lucy's silhouette on a rooftop for that of an enemy.

Things got really weird really quick after that, and I'm not just talking about the physical displacement that comes part and parcel with extended animus use. I mean Shaun. Shaun fucking Hastings. Making that guy mad never failed to cheer me up, even if our sniping drew blood, but holy shit. This guy...

This _fucking wise-ass guy_...

And his, an' his what, his fucking livid sarcasm and.

And he shows up, out of nowhere, _with a gun_, hahaha, and –

So I was thinking that I'd have to kill someone, that's real blood on my hands, yo, not cool, but then everything's _fine_ and damn near back to normal and I'm so _fucking relieved_ and, and it's raining and we both look like drowned hobos and _this guy_ is, I dunno, I don't even KNOW what the hell he thinks he's doing, but I know he's finally looking at me. Until he can't. Because his glasses have fogged up. Because we were sucking face, like ah, like that was normal now?

And maybe that was it, maybe he just needed to get laid. Maybe I did. Hell, maybe the girls needed a little alone time too; not with each other, probably, but you know. No better way to wind down, to take things back from critical, and so.

This guy, right? Cool as James Bond about the whole thing, like he just says it _out loud_ that he wants ta suck me off and this is a far, far cry from 'go away, Desmond'.

I mean, I'm only human.

It's like... it's like this, okay? So we fuck around. We fuck around a _lot_. There is really nothing else to occupy our time outside of the animus, unless Shaun goes on one of his research binges and it didn't take a genius to figure out how to keep him from disappearing into his work like that. I ain't subtle.

Shaun? Shaun is subtle. Shaun would stare at me over the top of his glasses across the breakfast table and I'd get hard. That's how subtle the dude could be. And man, if I weren't such a _selfish asshole_ I could have probably KNOWN the guy had, like, this _crush_ on me, and that was why he was such a prickly bastard all the time, and y'know, it was a bad idea. The whole thing was just asking for disaster.

So I've got him against a wall at some point, right? And this is the turning point, this is the extra stair you think you have to step from that ain't even there and you get this sinking feeling in your gut and like, so I've got his dick in my hand and he makes this _noise_ like holy shit you know this guy wants it and

there's like

this _twinge_ inside of me, see? So I go down on both knees and take him in my mouth and I've never done this shit sober, swear, so it's like he … I mean, he _says my name_ like I'm... what. I don't know. I suck him off, and I do that, and I'm hard, so I can't really stand up, and he does this ridiculous fireman's drag the few feet (I couldn't wait for earlier) across the hall to our room and there are

condoms

and I feel drunk and confused in this hazy kinda lust and it's kinda hard to believe that once we get the door kicked shut that he's got my pants undone and ain't shying from the kiss for once. I got to fuck him seven different ways from tuesday, shedding our clothes with my dick already past the tight ring of muscle; he gets this look in his eye whenever I'm shirtless that he doesn't try to hold back this time around, and it's almost like he's _worshiping_ me, I mean that ain't vanity it's just what he's _doing_.

(Unsettling; I thought he'd give some sort of fight, but the guy is like putty in my hands. Really clingy putty who ain't too proud to beg.)

It's intense, to say the least. I don't make it a habit to fuck people as like a power play, but I found myself pulling out just because I wanted to see the need in his face as his legs wrapped tighter around me and a whiny protest came tumbling out of his mouth.

The next time we fucked, some half a week later, he was the one who took me. He wasn't nice about it, and he didn't linger or tease the orgasm along like I had. It was like, maybe... _maybe_ he was trying to make up for that night. To remind himself that it could still be quick and dirty between us, and that I was still nice-guy-Desmond and he was still the cold bastard who was just trying to get off. It was a really sad, transparent retaliation and suddenly I knew that he _liked_ me, like maybe not exactly as a friend because we weren't set up to be _functional_ as friends, but this dude was very obviously terrified of whatever it was that we had between us and was determined to squash it.

Me? I just wanted my friends back. Or else I wanted that illusion of friendship back. Sure I liked fucking Shaun, who wouldn't? The man kept things interesting, to say the fucking least. I... I had even hated him at first.

But Rebecca was more than a potted plant to me, and Lucy was more than a guardian, and Shaun was more than a pair of livid hazel eyes glued to a computer screen. He was _more_, more than the pale bone of his wrists flashing at the keyboard's edge, the length of his fingers as they curled down my ass and more than the wet heat of his mouth when he finally got to demonstrate just _how good_ at giving head he really was.

I loved these people, and maybe that was why I'd have made such a terrible assassin. I kept this light in me, see, and I knew the minute my family wanted me to put this light out and live in the dark. But I didn't want that. I wanted to serve drinks and make people laugh, hear their stories, make up some of my own. I wanted to fuck Shaun Hastings and not get kicked out of the bed seconds later.

I wanted to wake up at noon and order a goddamn pizza and watch some fucking cartoons and have a beer and maybe a pet dog and someone, anyone, to be in my bed when I came home at three in the morning.

So if we found this apple, right? If we found this apple and Shaun was still fucking around with me, then maybe, _maybe_ we could keep in touch and maybe … Nah, I didn't really see that working out for either of us. He was still in the Brotherhood and I was still too chickenshit to call him out on his completely blatant infatuation. There are some roads that are too dark to travel down, like maybe they don't really have a way back once you've crossed some invisible line. Is that too metaphorical?

I was scared he'd shut me out. (Forgive me if I sound like a _total girl_ when I say that.)

So I grinned like nothing had changed, annoyed him at his desk and rallied the ladies into the usual fight. Get Shaun to eat something. Get Shaun to be nice. Get Shaun to go to bed already.

Get Shaun to look at me.


	2. the rise and fall of ebbing tide

I'm pulled up through the crashing program, like being dunked in a deep lake and towed along the rocky bottom before breaking through the other side of the world into a clammy body and bright air and the rushing noise of your own pulse. Lucy has the IV already out of my arm, and Becca is cursing somewhere further up the ruins at the generators.

"Sorry about that, Desmond," Lucy purses her lips, forehead pinched in concern. "You're going to be a bit dazed; it's totally normal when the power fails."

"Sabotage?" I try a grin, but probably just manage to look sick.

"Storm, seems like. Doppler report says all of Italy is in for a rough spring." Lucy sits back in a chair, blowing the hair out of her eyes. "I don't think we should risk getting any more work done with the weather like this."

Her words lend a warmth to my gut, and my attention perks up at the derisive snort from the direction of Shaun's desk. I always love it when he's the instigator, because it takes less effort on my part and the result is more or less the same. But Shaun doesn't go any further, and I twist in the animus chair to see him pulling his laptop to his desk and booting it up. The spare emergency lighting is a dim wash of red through the shelter we'd made of these subterranean ruins, and once I'm coherent enough I can slide noiselessly from the animus to try and sneak up on him.

"Taking cardio pretty hard in that last mission, Desmond?" Shaun prompts when I'm a mere yard away, ruining my hopes of giving him a good scare.

"What?" I'm kinda, yanno, indignant. "How did you know I was here?"

"You were taking cardio." I didn't need to see him to know he was smirking, shoulders lax and fingers typing nonchalantly away. "Thus, your body was in a sweat." The laptop closes with a snap, Shaun turning in his chair to squint at me through the dim. "Thus, I can smell you." He stands, and I don't really know what's going on because he's usually a lot subtler when the girls are within shouting distance, but he leans in real close like and takes off his glasses and makes a small appreciative, sorta, _noise _in the back of his throat and my heart is pounding like I'm still running along the rooftops of Venice.

Can't really let him get the upper hand, because I'd already reasoned with myself to stop fucking the guy who had this huge obvious crush on me if I wasn't really going to, ah, think of him like that? The verdict was still out on whether I'd just restrict him to hand jobs and oral. I liked Shaun, as I said, and I liked fucking around with him, but I didn't like the upgrade to a level 99 asshole he took on when he was trying to overcompensate for his totally conflicting emotions over yours truly. That level 99 guy could just go fuck himself, like literally.

I wanted Shaun to be... what. Nice. I wanted him to be nice, yeah.

Because sex_ is_ nice! It's for getting all loose and intense at the same time, going slow or going hard, it didn't matter so long as both people involved were having a good time! Sometimes it seemed like Shaun was prepared to be that guy who wasn't having the good time, like he was too far trapped in his own sad thoughts to come out and actually _be_ with me when I'm sucking him off. Other times it was like he wanted _m e_to be the guy who wasn't having a good time, all hard edges and insults (which, okay, sometimes that was actually hot, but not my point). Like there was a ration on pleasure and it was either take or give, never both.

And hey, I'm no Kama-sutra guru; I don't burn incense and I don't wear patchouli and I don't shave any part of my body, ever. Sex is messy and fun and refreshing like a long game of rugby if you find the right partner, but emotions... Eh. emotions could take sex and bog it down, draw it out and even make it impossible to actually start, which is why I'm standing in the near-dark stubbornly ignoring Shaun godamn Hasting's pickup moves.

He's a smart fucking dude, too, so he knows something's up but he's too damn proud to actually ask me about it and I just want to go jerk off in that shower I apparently need to take.

But nooo! Shaun, on top of being a snarky bastard, is also a selfish asshole who will totally go ahead and _attack_ a guy if he feels like he's being ignored. The man up and, what, he actually _grabs my face_ and is all scowly glaring and biting my mouth and fuck, fuck me, fuck _everything_ 'cos I don't know if this is hot or just insulting. You better believe I don't fucking kiss back, so he goes for the throat and now there's _hands _involved.

I can... I can so easily break this dude like it's not even funny. But I don't, 'cos the guy has obvious issues and all things considered I still like him like a not-quite-friend like maybe some sort of healthy rivalry or that's just the pathetic group dynamic love acting up again. I mean, I can break him physically, and then I can really hurt him, you know, _with words_. I don't, ah, really want to do that?

The thought of doing that has even calmed my heart rate a little, my body under control for once. Rejecting Shaun's advances because... because hell, I just didn't feel like fucking around with him – not if it meant all this stupid complicated shit.

Rebecca chuckles as she passes by, arm heavy with an extension cable. "_Jeeze _fellows, get a room."

Shaun doesn't budge, staring me dead in the eye like maybe that's some sort of improvement from when we used to drop each other like lead bricks if we so much as caught the movement of a spider in a corner? "Desmond," He sounds nearly apologetic. "I _like _the way you smell. Wasn't trying to insult you, daft thing."

"A _room_, you two!" Beck cackles from the kitchen, wolf-whistling. "Or do I get to start selling tickets?"

"Becky," Shaun calls back, and I push away without much struggle. This seems to have interrupted his snarky come-back, and he glances my way with his mouth half open in a soundless attempt. Closes his mouth in a frown, nudging his glasses back on to study me. "Desmond?"

Fuck, I love how he says my name, all heavy on the last D and long with the O and kinda skipping over the S like it's a Z. I step back, shaking my head. "Not feeling it tonight, man." Please, please just be a good guy for once you heinous asshole. Do the right thing. You know you want to.

The frown deepens, accompanied by a disinterested grunt. "Was it the crash? Think you ought to speak with Lucy about that, if you're feeling odd?"

I scoff; I can't help it. Typical Shaun, so professional and deferential. (He'd be surprised to learn I knew words like 'deferential', too, the prick.) A frustrated huff, "No, man, it ain't the crash. I just need you to be less of grade-A level 99 asshole for once."

Shaun's surprise is difficult to see, but you can note it in his posture and the way his words shutter themselves behind cool indifference. "I thought we already established that you don't smell _bad_, exactly...? So I'll break this into – " He catches himself, rewording carefully. "I mean, I'm going to be more direct." Crosses his arms, stance widened. "I want to fuck you, Desmond. Right now. Because you smell amazing and it's dark in here and I don't care if Becka watches; it's like having a dog watch, it's really no big deal,"

"Hey!"

For once, the absurdity of Shaun and Becka's bickering fails to amuse me. I counter with my own sincerity, "I want to fool around, too, but not in front of our friends and not if you're going to keep treating me like shit to make up for the fact that you... ah, like me? Like, _like _me, a lot? Like maybe you more than like me? Which is cool – " Shaun has grown still and Beck is making deliberate noise in the kitchen. "Because I'm okay with that, with you. I even like you sometimes too but man, seriously, drop the act. It's funny sometimes but mostly it's immature and unevolved. Like you got the short end of the social development stick." A shaky breath. "Or something. Which is okay, because you're a nerd and I get it. But – " I don't get to the part where I think we should fuck at least as friends and not the weird in-limbo mix between rivals and what-the-fuck else we were, because Shaun has taken advantage of the bad lighting and punched me full in the face.

I recoil, clutching my mouth. I don't even hit back, because this is _exactly_ what I'm talking about. Like it's so much easier for him to just act against me and be a total bastard and I'd only end up exhausting myself in the attempt to keep some fucking optimism in the relationsh – well, in the setup. Dynamic thing. Seriously fuck that guy.

"Dude, not cool!" Rebecca shouts down at Shaun as I enter the kitchen for some ice. "You really are kind of an asshole, Hastings!" She hits a nearby tote like maybe she wants to vault over it and get in a few good roundhouses or something. I'm bleeding, but Beck's outrage is kinda comforting. She jabs a finger at me, then in the general direction Shaun had stormed off. "Kick his ass, Desmond!"

"Nah," I mumble around the towel with the ice.

"Why the hell not?"

Smiling hurts. "It sucks, but I think I'm in love with the guy."

"Dude, seriously?" A pitying squint through the red gloom.

"Yeah. Anybody else, I woulda wrecked them." A sigh, face numb and throbbing. "But he can't or won't or something. Actually like someone like that, I mean; he just... doesn't. Anymore. I guess. Shit, I fucked this up."

"Nuh-uh, man. Hastings fucked this up. He took it to like, _domestic abuse_ levels of fucked up."

I can't help it, I laugh. It's just kinda absurd putting the words 'domestic' and 'Shaun' together in a mental image. "Nah, Beck. We fight." A shrug. "Guy like that, he gets scared so he fights. 'S what I like about the jerk."

"Okay, well, you're _bleeding_."

"Yep," I breathe deep, testing the swell of nasal passages. The towel comes away wet. "The price I pay for antagonizing Shaun fucking Hast – "

It's like cats fighting just outside your bedroom window at three in the morning, you wake up with a sick jolt of adrenaline that bites you in the chest with worry, even though you don't even like cats. The commotion only reached our ears by the time it had escalated to screaming level, and I only felt that pinch when I realized that one of those raw, raised voices belonged to a certain empirical accent I had never heard warped by that level of emotion. I mean, Lucy was screaming, but Shaun was _screaming_. Loud and long and it felt like being slowly gutted just to hear it.

Something clattered in the corridor and Beck was off like a shot, the voices reduced to a breathless sobbing I only assumed was Lucy. My feet had carried me closer to the tunnel leading out of our sanctuary silently and almost without my notice, but then I had already craned around the stone to hear Lucy try and compose herself. "He's just, I don't know what happened, Becka..." A stifled sniffle. "He just said some pretty awful shit to me and I'm like what's your problem Shaun, and he just goes nuts and, and – "

"I'm kicking his ass. I'm kicking his ass, okay? Desmond won't do it, so I'm going to kick his ass. Which way did he go?"

"Ngh," the sound of a nose blowing into a tissue. "God damn, that miserable bastard."

Becka's footsteps fade rapidly against the noise of the rain two levels up. I round the corner, startling Lucy with a hand on her shoulder. Her faded red jacket is smooth and cool and she smells like the rain and shampoo, and curls into the hug reluctantly. I mean, Lucy's a tough chica, but I don't doubt Shaun knows how and where to hit somebody to hurt them, especially if he's known them as long as he's known our project director. And they were always this weird sorta team, those two, like whenever Lucy had to be the bad guy, Shaun was the only one who had her back. Boss-lady was just shaken, now, looking a little more angry than she was sad.

"He threatened to quit." A shuddering breath, like _that_ was what had upset her the most. "We can't do this without him, _he knows that_."

I was holding my breath for the question, for when she'd round on me and ask what I'd done to upset our star historian. She pulled from the hug instead and wiped her face. "Ugh. Cabin fever just gets worse every time I see it."

"Is that what this was?"

Lucy blinks at me, fixing her hair. "Well, yeah. Shaun's not the most patient of people in the first place, and he was already months overdue for an explosion. He threatens to quit, blames someone on the team for aggravating him, and... well, he's never torn into _me_like that, but hell. Maybe I was his scapegoat this time around." She pats my arm. "Are you bleeding?"

"Um. Yes?"

"Oh goddammit!" Lucy laughs bitterly. "Did you at least hit him back?"

"Nope."

"Is that why Becka's going to kick his pasty nerd ass?"

"Hey, there's a thought. _Nerd fiiiight_." It eased the sting, the ache, to clown with Lucy and watch her handle her own crisis with such grace.

Lucy manages a genuine smile, checking me out from the corner of her eye the way we used to check each other out when we first met. Not in like a sexual way, I mean in sort of an appraisal, like measuring someone without being rude about it. Taking, you know, inventory. "I... didn't think it would get that bad. Between you. Maybe the morning drills were a bad idea; I know Shaun's crap with mornings and I shouldn't have disrupted his sleep schedule like that – "

"LUCE, stop blaming yourself. Guy's just wired with a short fuse." A cough. "And hey, you know, him and me... I get it. There's parts of me he likes, and parts of me he doesn't or can't like, and he couldn't make up his mind which was the better choice, so now he probably just doesn't like me at all." A shrug. "So it's just square one, really. He can be an asshole and I can choose to ignore it."

"Pfft. Square one would be more like, Shaun can be an asshole and you can be a whiny slacker."

"Oi," I wince as soon as the word leaves my mouth, because it's decidedly British vernacular. "I mean, hey," A defeated sigh. "So... how are we doing on the whole saving-the-world front lately?"

Lucy chuckles. "We're doing all right. Still plenty of time, Desmond, even with these storms."

"Are they going to be okay, out there?"

"I heard a cab pull away a few minutes ago and Becka just sent me a text. They'll be fine, if not a little hungover by the time they get back." Lucy stretches, folding away her phone. "Beck's got her glock and Shaun's already nose-deep in regret, so..."

"You're gonna milk that for all its worth, I bet."

"Damn straight I am, Des. Wanna order pizza?"

See, this is why I like Lucy. She's not afraid to cry, to worry and shout and make sure we're all eating right and getting enough sleep. But she's also still a _girl_, someone who likes to joke and flirt and order pizza and have a few beers and talk about the past. About Shaun's past, because she noticed the way I sat forward avidly over the card table, about what he was like when he first joined the Brotherhood.

And I could just picture him in that same haircut, skinnier than he is now (because those morning drills had put a solid weight behind that punch, thanks Luce), dressed in a college logo tee and torn jeans and wearing those ridiculous glasses before designer frames were even cool. He even had Nintendo and Atari wrist bands, which had endeared Rebecca to him forever. I laughed, and Lucy grew misty-eyed over the conversation, and I was glad that she was glad to tell me this stuff. And this is why I love my friends and will never put that light out.

The generators were recovered by the time Beck stumbled in, dripping wet and laughing under the weight of Shaun's slumped frame. "I knogged him out, dudes!" She crowed triumphantly, voice stunted by alcohol or rain-induce headcold or the burgeoning black eye and subsequent bloodied nose and I can't believe Shaun actually beat on a girl, jesus he really _was_a miserable bastard –

Lucy raised her beer in a toast to the spectacle, and I was a little wary of her non-reaction.

Becka stumbled, and laughed until it looked like it might hurt. "Desman," she gasps. "I dold you, man. I bead him up! Woah – " I catch the dead weight just in case he cracked his skull on the stone flooring, and Rebecca grimaced and stood straighter to pop her back. "Hey, 's at beer? For mwah?"

Lucy raises a cool eyebrow. "Maybe. How bad did you beat him up?"

"Rill bad, girl. R_illll_bad. Cragged his rib, mos def." A triumphant sniffle, Beck bending to help me drag Shaun in the general direction of the bathroom. "Brogg his, nngh, glasses, so hhhe's gonna wear condags fer like," A snicker, "Ever." A huff, and I try not to let her tug too rough as we get his knees clear of the stairs. "Stompd him like fugging whag-a-mole and like my bood," Pointing dramatically to her boot, "MY BOOD, 's the fuggin hammer." Grabs a beer in passing, chugs it, surfacing with a triumphant "FUG YEA. Eat it, Hasdeens." Her half-lidded smiling derision was at once funny and heart-warming and for the first time that evening I finally got the sense that Shaun was going to be all right.

Beck was also kinda fond about it, gripping Shaun's slack wrist like she didn't want to lose a best friend, sniffling back her bloody nose and just staring once she'd run out of steam.

"Ey, Desman? Jus' leave himb here. Fuckwit gave me a black eye, he can fugging catsch nenonia, newnenia, mononia, he can catch the fugging plague." A belch, "Be good for himb!"

"Yeah, all right."

Lucy was already shuffling out of the back storage with a sleeping bag under her arm, smug and drunk and a little scary in her not-giving-a-fuck that two of her team members were all scuffed up. "Could you check to see if he's got a concussion?"

I startle, "Uh," drop his arm to bend carefully poke at a swollen eyelid. He flops to life long enough to push my hand away, so I'm guessing that's a no on the concussion thing. I doubt he even knows who it is that's peeling his wet sweater off, he's so out of it. I'm given the chore of de-pantsing the guy, on account of all the surplus feminine modesty we had to deal with. Relatively dry in boxers and undershirt, Lucy helps me bundle him into the sleeping bag and zip him up.

Becka has dragged her own bag over and already changed into warm pyjama sweats, brandishing three bottles of water between herself and Shaun as she hunkers down. "Dond worry, dudes. I god this." She immediately rolls over and passes the fuck out.

Did I mention how much I love my team? Not yet? Jesus, these people are awesome. Lucy shares a grin of probably the same feeling, then stands to clean up the beer bottles. "Okay, I think we've all let off enough steam for tonight. You turning in?"

"Yeah," I hug Lucy tight, just for a moment, because I dunno. I'm drunk and I feel like I miss these people even though they're right here. Lucy hugs me back, and glances a kiss on my cheek that I return, and then solidifies a kiss on my mouth because why the hell not, and we collide again in something a little more like a heavy actual kiss and I wonder, vaguely, if this is anything like the ideal friends-with-benefits setup dynamic thing, or if it would tilt dangerously into relationship territory? So. I stop.

And it sucks and she's all embarrassed but I guess we can laugh about it because there are much worse things we gotta worry about and it's not trivial shit like fucking or kissing or having a crush or not having a crush; I mean we are trying to save lives here. She pushes me toward the room I share with Shaun, and keeps pushing because she's following me, and it's so much easier to say no to this because I genuinely and very clearly actually care about Lucy.

I didn't really care about Shaun, not at first. I even hated him a little. That's why we could fuck around, and that's why I didn't retaliate when he hit me. Shaun might have been, I dunno, holding something back or whatever. But I was using him. Point blank. Because we fought. Because I knew he was gay.

See.

I'm such an asshole.


End file.
